Saturday, April 26, 2014

I'm usually the one reminding Mr Rabbit that 'She who smiles last wins'. No matter what goes down in Paris you should always just smile and move on otherwise you will sink into a pile of muck and die, because nobody gives a shit about how grumpy or annoyed you are, and you end up getting nowhere. Sometimes Mr Rabbit can't help it, but I must say I'm usually pretty cool about the standard Paris frustrations - drivers ignoring the green men (especially that one at the intersection of Magenta and the Faubourg St Martin), the being-cut-in-front-of in queues (oops! Pardon! Je ne vous ai pas vu!), the long waits in front of disinterested people at desks, the ubiquitous disdain of waiters. But this night I was definitely spiky. It had been one of those hairy exits from the house in desperation to get OUT and have some FUN - a badly put together outfit - terrible eyeliner I should never have started - too late to stop for an apéro - which has become the necessary brush-down between the world of the tiny clutches to the lights and dazzle of the Adult Realm - I NEEDED SOME FUN, I needed some time with Rabbit and the Dodge and his rocking love who had fantastically and unexpectedly-as-always rolled in town for 48 hours - an opening for another one of her artists. This was our chance for talk, and drink and food.

I was definitely flustered, and way too eager.

I rabbited on to Mr Rabbit about some random junk all the way over the canal to Parmentier, where I was sure the Dodge must have booked a restaurant of the same name in a distant French suburb because you could never get a table at this joint at such last minute notice.

They were running late.

We stood in the trendy entranceway and a trendy waiter approached. I felt desperately untrendy but I tried to pout it up a bit.

And then it happened.

A couple had entered closely behind us - a stunning French woman and her older-looking man friend. Just as I went to talk to the waitress, the woman stepped in front of me! As if I was invisible. Now if you live in Paris you'll know this happens all the time - usually I just allow it to happen or grumble a bit, or shrug and look at Instagram. But this time I venomously hissed 'Excusez-moi', and stepped rudely back in front of the lady, turning my back to her in such a way as to cut her off from the waitress's view before stating audibly and with demon bile 'FUCKING FRENCH' to Mr Rabbit.I said it deliberately so the French woman would hear. There was spittle around my top gums. How DARE she. Every time I had been ignored, stepped on, near-run over, cut off, cut-in-front of, denied, hung up on and overlooked accumulated in that one raging moment and spurted out.

It didn't feel very good, I must say, especially when I saw the look on Mr Rabbit's face, and I remembered the main tenet behind 'She who smiles last' - it's always you who feels bad if you let it out - the offender usually just feels like they've won.

The waitress couldn't find our name on the list - and we eventually realised once I pointed to Dodger's name on the sheet that our table was for 6. Damn - the Dodge must have invited the artist. Of course it could never be as perfect as I dreamed.

Mr Rabbit and I sat down at the table - at the end. He was still a bit gobsmacked by my racist outburst. I smiled and tried to pour some honey on the mood. And then, to my slow, sinking horror, I noticed the Frenchwoman and her man moving towards our table. I looked down at my napkin. Yes, it was true. They were the artist and his girlfriend.

She sat next to me, and the artist sat on the far seat on the other side of the table.

Should I say something? There was no doubt she heard me. And, as she sat down and introduced herself in perfect English, I realized my fucking french was unlikely to have been mistaken.

I hate myself, I thought as I slugged back a glass of bubbled water and looked around the table for ways to suicide. The man seemed put out, but he was older, Greek and a serious artist, so that may have been his demeanor. The lady also seemed uncomfortable, but maybe that could have been that we were sitting here without our common link - I told myself. Perhaps none of us could be bothered meeting new people tonight and hadn't been aware of the others' impeding presence...

Or had we, I wondered in my clammy sheets later that night. Was it possible that in fact the woman had not been trying to overstep me in the queue - rather, just to point out on the waitress's chart that the booking was made for 6 instead of 4, and that they were the other two?

I rolled over and moaned, wanting to die all over again.

She who smiles last - I thought to myself. I shall never, ever be rude again.

Monday, April 7, 2014

Her dad was a bodybuilder and her mother was short and sweet and baked cakes and ferried her around to dance competitions. I didn't know it then, but her dad beat her mother and ended up in jail later on. So many things you don't see when you're eight.Their house was nice, a double-story in a court, and she only had one brother so they had that bit more money. Their house was always dim, however, curtains drawn. There were always videos.She and I had a love-hate relationship. She was a real bitch - a scratchy one - we had known each other right through primary school and depending on our - or was it just her - mood - we would hold hands and tell secrets or she would chase me around the oval, catch me and beat me. Sometimes with other girls. Once, together, we asked another girl to tip a bin over a girl's head.There were pink things in her room. She had one of those plastic doll busts with hair that you could brush AND the little plastic lipsticks. Her trundle bed was soft and pink and slid neatly back underneath her own bed with its dancer spread and fluffy lace pillows.Her mother let her have lots of sugar.Also, she had a live bunny rabbit.When she began getting her period her mother soaked their knickers in a bucket together. I was so ashamed, I couldn't have imagined sharing that sort of thing with my own mother. Also - the bucket would be kicked over in two seconds in our house.There was this video. She was allowed M, and even R-rated ones. I was still utterly PG-restricted. It was a horror movie about girls going to a dance school and getting locked in. One naked woman in the shower dropped some soap and offered it sensually and threateningly to a young girl saying,"Try it. It's hypoallergenic."That word just came up in my copywriting job and to this day whenever I see it I think of that film. There was barbed wire all around the dance school and a particular unforgettable scene involved a girl jumping desperately out of a window only to be met with a sea of barbed wire through which she could only try to swim... I looked on in awe, knowing I should never sleep again. My friend's mother soaking knickers, the smell of cakes baking in the background.